


I Can Never Be Clean

by RiftOdyssey



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, lots of cleaning, strangely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27630418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiftOdyssey/pseuds/RiftOdyssey
Summary: Tommy stays at his house the night after the explosion, hoping to put his worry aside for the time being. Still, he can't hide from what happened forever.
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit, TommyInnit & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 3
Kudos: 56





	I Can Never Be Clean

Tommy stayed at his house that night. The wind blew through the gash in the face of the building, barely covered by the tarp he and Tubbo had tacked up. The night was colder than he'd expected; summer had come and gone so fast.

He felt dead on his feet, still buzzing. His chest and arms jittered even as he tried to still himself. His head was pulling itself apart. He knew he had to get clean. He tried to run his hand through his hair—it got stuck. It felt like a wig, foreign to the rest of him, stuffed with ash and debris. He tried again, only for it to snag once more. He tried to tug through the knot, only hurting himself in the attempt.

He turned on the sink and let the water rise, filling up the basin. The water was smooth and flat, reflecting what light there was in the room. Carefully, Tommy rested his fingertip on the surface, then his whole palm. He watched as black soot sank into the water. His palm stung, reminding him of every scrape and cut across it. The water was room temperature, yet it almost burned against his skin. He pulled up his hand to find he still couldn't see the pink of his skin. This followed up his arm, where the water ran down his dirty, scabbing skin. His elbows were red craters, surrounded by black wastes.

He found some soap and started washing his hands. Immediately, the bar and the water were coated black. He kept at it, lathering up his palms and scrubbing between his fingers. The soap running over his wrists that would usually be an annoyance didn't bother him. He dunked his hands in the water and wiped them on his trousers. Even then, his hands remained a sickly grey with black leylines running deep.

He kept going, washing up his arms. The soapy water stung, seeping into cuts and scrapes and tears. This too gave disappointing results—grey skin and discomfort, the crawling sensation of dirt too deep to clean.

It was only now that he looked up. He hadn't been purposefully avoiding his reflection—there had just been more important things to do—but seeing it now made him wish he had been. 

He was drenched in dark ash. His face was hardly clear enough to be recognizable. Around his eyes were smears of dirt, at his nose and temple, anywhere he hadn't rubbed away after the explosion. It ran solid past his cheek and into his neck, ears, and deeply matted hair. His shirt was hardly better—entirely soiled, only scrapes of the red sleeves remained visible. The worst were the burns. 

Unlike the ones peppering his hands and arms, the large burn that rose over his temple was obscene. The mark was violent and swollen, surely infected. It was cross-cut with all the other scrapes and tears, bleeding into one another. Something was mesmerizing about the wounds. They hadn't scabbed over due to their size, they were just red. A distinct, shiny red, jumping out from the ash. 

He emptied the basin and ran the water again. The water wasn't quite clear, some dirt remained. Still, Tommy ducked down and got to work. He tried to wash his neck as his hair soaked. There was just so much of it. It bled down his front and seeped into his shirt further. His hair still wouldn't budge. His head rose to reveal the unsightly ball of matting and knots. At least some of it was visible. He mopped up the mud with his shirt and let the sink drain.

* * *

Tommy let the door to his old room open with a soft _click_ and slowly stepped inside. The air inside was musty, still from disuse. It was lucky he hadn't kept any valuables in here, otherwise, it would have been looted long ago.

It was just as he had left it before the election. The bed was still unmade; the sheets were a warm summer green, they'd been a housewarming gift. It had been such a small gesture, but it still meant so much—a reminder of family in an unfamiliar land.

Fuzzily, he remembered when he last got up in this room, threw the covers aside, and put on his royal blue uniform. That uniform would transform him, make him brave, make him proud to stand next to his president. He'd felt unkillable. He'd felt excited. He wasn't sure what he felt now. He wanted to say tired, but that didn't feel entirely right. There were things to plan, repairs to do, there was no time to be tired.

The night he and Wilbur were exiled, Tommy remembered how his brother cried. He'd sank into the far corner of their makeshift bed and hid his head in his coat and sobbed. Tommy left to collect wood for the fire but wasn't out of earshot when he started screaming. It was like getting stabbed, hearing Wil in that much pain, and being unable to do anything to help him. He wasn't sure that Wilbur ever stopped, just that the stone walls of the cavern they soon adopted suffocated the noises inside.

He looked for clothes. There wasn't much in his drawers except a spare shirt, he pulled off his ruined clothes and put it on—a uniform shirt, well kept and ironed. He wondered who had let him borrow it.

He sat down beside the bed and started pulling off his shoes. He winced as he felt the pain in his feet. Pulling his socks off, he was surprised his feet weren't jet black too. They were a bit grimy, but that was it. He tried wiggling them, and— _there it is,_ he thought, realizing one of his toes wasn't moving. It was survivable but annoying. His stomach growled.

Techno had made them dinner once. He'd been living with them for about a week when they came back one day to the smell of mashed potatoes and gravy. Tommy laughed seeing the pride echoing across his brother's stoic face, explaining how he'd maximized farming efficiency underground with apparent glee. Wilbur stayed quiet for most of the meal, enjoying the food and company. Of course, Tommy had been as loud and obnoxious as always, loudly exclaiming that they'd take back L'manberg in no time together. That look on Techno's face back then, he couldn't have possibly known what that meant. He couldn't have possibly guessed.

Tommy took a deep breath and looked across his room once again, shaking himself out of his thoughts. Another point of pain registered, right in the center of his knee—several small chips of glass. He must have fallen on something during what happened, the wound now visible. Tommy poked one of the pieces with his finger, wincing slightly as it shifted in his knee. He pressed on, willing it back and forth gently until there was a movement to match the pain. Then, carefully, he tried to pick it out. It was tricky, with the size of such a speck, but the piece finally dislodged and Tommy tossed it into the corner. Then he set at the rest, slowly plucking the pieces out of his skin. His arm was sore, and the angle he was bent over at made his back ache, but he didn't stop until every last piece was gone, he couldn't.

Finishing the task, he almost felt worse than when he started it. The floor was cold and unforgiving beneath him; his broken toe stung as it pressed into the wood. His body felt like lead, he ran his hands over the rest of it, trying to find any other intrusions. There were none that he could spot, so he checked again. He couldn't go to bed with stuff still sticking out of him, he reasoned.

Phil would always make sure he was cleaned up before bed. It was almost prideful how he used to attempt to get into bed without getting ready. Seeing if he could get away with not brushing his teeth or cleaning up scrapes. If only he had that same glee now, maybe he wouldn't feel so awful, so tight and unclean. Tommy ran his tongue across the inside of his lip, feeling where his braces had torn deep gashes. Phil always had something to help with his injuries—warm food and soft words and healing potions.

Other people needed healing potions now, he had seen them carrying the injured and dying. They were people Tommy knew, people he loved. He tried not to think about the people he hadn't seen, the ones that melted into the crowd of screaming people and disappeared. His heart raced unwillingly as he tried to remember how this place used to be. 

_George and Dream used to giggle and laugh. Nikki and Fundy used to bake. Tubbo used to turn and look at him, the smile on his face as big as his heart. They used to listen to music together. Wilbur would sit for hours by the trees and thoughtfully pick out notes on his guitar. Techno would always smile as Phil welcomed him home after a long day..._

He wanted to stop. He needed to think about anything else, but as his eyes started burning with tears the floodgates buckled.

How long had it been since he'd seen his brothers happy? How long would it be until he saw those smiles again? What was he going to do without his big brothers? He wouldn't have to worry because they were okay. Techno was safe, Wilbur was being healed—because there was no way they left him out there, limp on the floor—there was just no way!

Phil had cradled Wil in his arms. Wil, who clung to his coat with pale hands as his head drifted back. He was talking or trying to talk, it almost seemed like he was smiling. Phil held him tight, tears already down the length of his face, shaking.

That couldn't be it. That wasn't Wilbur, that wasn't the boy he'd seen grow up. That wasn't the boy who wouldn't stop talking about whales for a month, the boy who nearly drowned playing with his best friend in the pond, the boy who'd been so proud to perform at the talent show. It wasn't the boy who had brokered peace between Techno and his friends when schemes got out of hand or that always sang Tommy songs when he couldn't sleep. It wasn't the man so joyous and proud of what he had built, the father so bubbling with love that he'd been willing to risk it all.

He wasn't dead, it wasn't over. How could he disappear so quickly—where could he have gone?

His big brother couldn't be dead.

Tommy's tears hit the ground, tapping against the wood over and over. His breaths were stifled by snot as he wracked out sobs. He tried to cover his mouth, stifle the noise, but it wouldn't work. The sound kept tumbling out. He couldn't move—his throat hurt, his body hurt, everything hurt and it just wouldn't stop. He sat there for what felt like hours trying to breathe.

 _Pop._ The noise off in the distance startled Tommy out of his state as he looked around. _Pop._ Fireworks, far off in the night, their sky-scraping shrieks muffled by the distance. He stood and listened to the cacophony, for a moment. The noise filtered out just as he pulled back the blankets and crawled into bed, letting the still silence overtake him. The fabric practically melted around him, enveloping him in such softness that it alone nearly brought him back to tears. But he was still cold. He turned, trying to crawl into his own body heat, to no avail. Tossing and turning, he pulled at the sheets.

Finally, he curled up between the two pillows on either side of him. He rested against one as he wrapped his arms around the other and held it tight. For a second it almost felt safe. He almost felt at home.

 _"Goodnight,"_ He whispered to them both, letting his eyes glaze over and slip shut.


End file.
